


Baby's First Solstice

by Whreflections



Series: Sterek Christmas Fics 2018 [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Adoption, Alive Hale Family, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire, Beta Derek Hale, Christmas Fluff, Full Shift Werewolves, Kid Fic, M/M, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-12 08:59:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16869991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whreflections/pseuds/Whreflections
Summary: 6 years after getting together (which came innumerable years after wanting to), Stiles and Derek are ready to start a family.  It's an easy decision to decide to take steps toward adopting a newborn werewolf- but that isn't what happens, not exactly.Stiles really should be used to his plans going just slightly askew, by now, and still working out just exactly as they should.





	Baby's First Solstice

**Author's Note:**

> This is all for fun so if there are inaccuracies to real world adoption here (and I know there are), please just. Let them be lol In this world, this is how this works. 
> 
> If you've read my first sterek Christmas fic, this is a follow up with those same boys. The response to the first one honestly blew me away a little because it was more than I expected, so thank you all so, so much.

On the first ring, Stiles came awake so suddenly he nearly knocked his phone flying.  It was a side effect of the life he’d had—his mom’s illness, his dad’s job, his entire high school experience.  There hadn’t been a time in his memory where a late night call wouldn’t mean an emergency, an urgent need he couldn’t miss.

By the time the chorus of his ringtone had started for a second time, he’d managed to get a grip, and jerk the phone in against his cheek.  He hadn’t even looked at the caller ID.

“Hello?”  To his own ears, it sounded more sleepy than tight, but he felt Derek shift behind him, so he must have heard something there he didn’t like.  Still half asleep, he buried his face into the dip between Stiles shoulders.  The stubble on his chin scraped along the line of Stiles spine, a slight involuntary shiver on its heels.  Stiles leaned back into the familiar warmth of him, and held the phone tighter. 

“Mr. Stilinski, I’m sorry to call so late.”  With his brain still coming online, it took Stiles a moment too long to place her.  The silence stretched until he snatched her name out of it, a little clumsy. 

“Samantha!  Ms. Dawson, hi, no it’s fine; I’m awake—“  Even then he wasn’t yet, really, but he _was_ sitting up, scrabbling for the bedside light and a piece of paper.  He’d been expecting a call from her, sure, but not like this; not in the night to catch them unprepared.  “Is someone interested in our profile?”

Derek pressed closer against his side, his chin resting none too comfortably on Stiles shoulder.  Stiles let him. 

“Not yet, but something has come up I’d like to speak with both you and your mate about.  I would’ve called tomorrow, but it really couldn’t wait,” she said, her typically low voice bolstered a little with urgency.  “This child isn’t a newborn, but I think she might be a good fit.”

Though it wasn’t necessary, though Derek could have heard the phone two rooms over, Stiles shifted the phone to hold it between them and tapped the screen to put it on speaker, bringing Derek in.  “He’s here.  We’re listening.”

Listening, anticipating.  The air in the room felt different, somehow, now that he’d realized what the conversation was about.  Just two weeks ago, they’d painted the nursery, wanting it done long before it was ready to be inhabited, to minimize fumes that could irritate little wolfy noses.  Two weeks ago, they’d been expecting to possibly be months in limbo, waiting for an adoptive mother to choose them who didn’t mind that one of her child’s parents would be human, and now…

Now, Stiles fidgeted with the edge of the notepad he’d grabbed, the pen fallen from his fingers, forgotten.

“A 5 month old werewolf baby is in need of a family due to an unstable situation within her pack.  Linden Marie Holloway.  She was surrendered by her birth mother when she became concerned the baby might come to harm on the Solstice.  There was, apparently some…substantial dissent within the pack as to whether the child could be allowed to remain in the pack.  The pack is rural, and highly superstitious.  In addition to the child’s first shift happening later than they would have anticipated—“

“She’s still young,” Derek murmured at Stiles’ shoulder, short and rough. Stiles let go of the notepad in favor of taking Derek’s hand into his lap instead, and squeezing it to settle them both. 

“—her wolf was a silver white that’s…fairly genetically rare in their region.  The mother says there’s old superstition about those born with the coat, and I don’t doubt it, but I get the feeling there’s some suspected infidelity, too.  In any case, the alpha rejected her—“

A growl rumbled in Derek’s chest; Stiles could feel the vibration of it where they touched.  He’d known Derek since they were children, but only since they’d come together as mates six years ago had he _really_ started to learn the different nuances of him—how to wake him up in the morning without making him grumpy, how he liked his coffee once he was up.  The way his breathing changed when Stiles walked into a room and he smelled him properly.  The difference in a playful growl, and a dangerous one.

This was dangerous, deep and real, guttural, as if his fangs were already sprouting. 

Stiles squeezed hard at his hand to stave it off, tiny, ineffective human nails digging into Derek’s palm.

“—and we have her in a temporary home, for the time being.  She should recover fine once she’s in a permanent home, but the change has obviously been traumatic and she’s extremely distressed.  The pediatrician who examined her at intake said it’s best if she’s moved into a stable pack environment as soon as possible.  I don’t want you to feel obligated, and you certainly can have time to think about it, but with Mr. Hale’s pack so large and well-established, and the two of you looking to welcome a new werewolf child into the family—“

“We don’t need time to think about it.”  The words were out of his mouth too fast to stop them, not that Stiles would have tried.  For the most part, their relationship communication wasn’t too bad, and this was, admittedly, a fairly enormous life decision to make so quickly—but hadn’t they, really, made this decision months ago?

They’d been at the kitchen table, and Stiles had spread the book on unusual births he’d found at the library out between them.  On the page he held open the instructions were clearly listed for crafting an amulet that would allow the wearer the ability to carry a child, even should they typically be physically unable.  It didn’t come without its risks—it couldn’t be removed until the due date without the risk of danger to the parent or child, and the births were often messy, dangerous affairs.  Survival wasn’t guaranteed, and though his odds might be improved by having Talia on hand to administer the bite if needed, it couldn’t be discounted that even if he didn’t bleed out too quickly for it to matter, his mother hadn’t survived the bite.  There was some thought that genetics played a factor in reception to turning, and if that was true, there was a chance Stiles could never be a werewolf. 

Not even to save his life.

He hadn’t even finished all the pros and cons, then, before Derek was interrupting him, reaching out to slam the cover of the book closed as if he couldn’t bear to even have the words exposed to the air another minute.  His _no_ was firm, brooking no argument, and Stiles had carried a mouthful of shame at his own surprise.  He’d had his own concerns about the risks, and he knew Derek loved him, but part of him had thought even under the circumstances, even hard as it might be, Derek was still a wolf from an alpha line, and he might want to try.  The drive to keep the line unbroken was far stronger for him than any human, no matter how much they might want a child. 

Derek had that want in him still, Stiles knew—and yet he’d looked Stiles in the eye, and told him he thought they should adopt, provide a pack for a wolf who had none.  That want was honest, too. 

That choice months ago had brought them here, to a phone call in the middle of the night and the sharp electricity in the air all around that Stiles was absolutely certain Derek could feel, too. 

He should have asked Derek first, maybe, but he didn’t have to.  He really didn’t have to.  If he’d needed any confirmation at all, his glance at Derek’s face gave it to him—open, and eager, and staring into the phone with near predatory intent. 

“Where is she?”  Derek asked, with urgency so fierce Stiles felt his breath catch. There was a particular urgency, when a father’s child was in need; he’d heard it from his dad time and again. 

Derek hadn’t even held her yet, an already he said _she_ with the same weight as a name, as if it could apply to no one else but someone who was his. 

“Camden, Alabama.  You can fly in to Montgomery and rent a car.  You’ll be taking her first on a nominally temporary basis, but as her biological parents have already surrendered all parental rights, and you’ve already passed every criteria to be eligible to adopt a newborn, there’s no reason at all your application won’t go through.  It should be official by the start of the new year.” 

The clock on the dresser across the room said 3:11.  Outside, even Stiles could hear the sound of the wind rustling through increasingly empty limbs, the closer sound of Derek’s breath where he leaned in close.  Somewhere in this little house they’d built on land his pack had owned for generations, their cat was sleeping, or prowling, or staring with her particular glare of vague unease at something seemingly innocuous but ominous to her little eyes, like the sugar canister near the coffee maker Stiles had enchanted to glow red and bite at his fingers when he was running low. 

Nothing had changed, objectively.  Everything was exactly where it had been a moment ago, but there was, suddenly, an absence, and that made all the difference.  The nursery down the hall had been for months now a space where no one belonged but someone would, eventually; a place of quiet promise that hadn’t been empty, just waiting. 

Now, it was empty.  That changed everything. 

=====

It was grey, in Camden. 

Nearly 12 hours after they’d gotten the phone call from Samantha, and here they were, nearly clean across the entire country, driving back roads under an early setting sun.  The rain was heavy and persistent; combined with the time change and jet lag it brought the surreal feeling of the night before never having ended at all, but stretched out instead into some liminal gauntlet. 

Facing a moment big enough that there would always be a Before and an After was strange, in itself, but it was odder still to be stuck in the breath in-between.

Stiles leg jumped, out of time with the windshield wipers.  The houses they passed, now, seemed a strange array, like their yards had been put together by someone with mismatched pieces.  A waist high concrete slug creept toward a birdbath made from a stack of paving stones and an old mixing bowl; two blow mold Santas stood on either side of a tilted red candle with the word ‘NOEL’ down it in elegant white script.  There, a goat stood on top of the cab of a rusted truck in the middle of a yard so high even this late in the season that the grass came up near to the windows.  There, an empty box spring frame was strung between two trees, waiting for a mattress, and perhaps for the summer.  There, a muddy dog barked soundlessly at them from behind a thin, useless chicken wire fence. 

Across the front of the fence, centered in front of the house, someone had tied two signs: _Beware of dog_ and _Jesus Saves All His Creatures_.  The second sign had been vandalized, red X’s drawn across at least two of the species shown kneeling around the blocky figure of Christ in the middle, but Derek was driving too fast for Stiles to place them.  He would have bet money one of them was a naga, but the other…was it a fairy?  A mermaid? 

A werewolf?

Derek’s hand rested across his thigh, stilling it.  He’d been jerking his leg hard enough for his kneecap to make contact with the gear shift.

Stiles sighed, heavy, shifting down in his seat to press into the steady weight of Derek’s palm, grateful when it stayed.  “Sorry.  I’m just—“  He gestured out at the dim twilight, the field currently to their right.  The cows in it were soaked to the bone.  “I’m a nervous wreck anyway, and this place—“

“I know.” 

Stiles knew rural California; he’d essentially grown up in it.  Beacon Hills, after all, wasn’t an overly large town.  He didn’t know this place, not its highlights or its demons.  He didn’t like not knowing, not when he was already going into this with so many unknowns.  He knew a fair bit about werewolf children from his childhood and his lifelong friendship with Derek, sure, but it wasn’t the same as literally growing up in the house, like Derek had.  It wasn’t the same as knowing everything it would take to raise a stable werewolf infant, much less one that had already suffered the loss of her pack before she was even old enough to talk. 

It all spilled out of him, a ramble that stretched on minutes and minutes past farm houses and rotting barns, until his throat was hurting and they were passing a Citgo gas station that probably hadn’t been open since the 80’s. 

“—and how do I give her what she needs to bond?  I read plenty about how to comfort a newborn, but a newborn werewolf who’s bonding to their first pack and a werewolf who’s already bonded are two completely different things; she’s not going to want me, I’m going to smell foreign and human and—“

“And I’m going to smell like a dangerous outsider, and she’ll probably think I’m going to kill her,”  Derek interrupted, though he hadn’t raised his voice.  It was steady, and even, and probably repeated to himself in his mind half a dozen times or more on the plane ride here.  If he hadn’t known him as well as he did, Stiles wouldn’t have been able to hear how much it hurt. “That’s what her instincts will tell her; that’s all she has right now.”

Stiles fingers slipped through Derek’s against his thigh, comfortingly dwarfed by their size.  He looked every inch the second in line to inheriting command of one of the largest packs in California, but for all his strength and all his temper when it was riled, he was, still, the gentlest man other than his own father Stiles had ever known. 

“If she was older, wouldn’t you—like your mom did with Jackson, fight back just enough to win.”  She had explained, then, in terms of respect—when a wolf joined the pack, they had to learn that you were strong enough to lead.  You _could_ kill them, at any moment, but you never would.  Not when they belonged to you. 

“If she was old enough to understand how pack dynamics work, but she isn’t.  She’s just a pup, so when we get there—“  Derek pulled Stiles hand to his mouth, a slow kiss pressed over his pulse before he scented him there, slow and deliberate.  “She’s going to panic.  I already called mom while you were on the phone with your dad in Houston; I know what to do.  Just let me do it.” 

Stiles knew, then, what he meant—or, he understood the physicality of it, the certainty that by necessity, adopting this girl and bringing her home was going to mean Derek had to subject himself to all the tiny ferocity of the wildest parts of a little creature just trying to survive. 

He knew, but the reality of it didn’t sink in in the car, or the gravel driveway, or even the wet front porch where he stood and heard for the first time over the backdrop of dripping rain their little girl, howling at the top of her tiny little lungs. 

It was a horrible, wrenching sound, scraping like glass against his skin.  The foster mother leaning against the door across from them looked exhausted, her hair half escaped from a pony tail, a little boy locked around her leg with his face buried in the fuzziness of her Cookie Monster pajama pants. 

“When I picked her up at the pediatrician’s office, she was so upset she’d shifted…”  She shook her head, slow and helpless.  In the background, the howl reached a frantic pitch.  “I’ve done everything I can, but I’m an omega.  I can’t give her what she’s looking for, and I can’t get her to calm down enough to shift.  She won’t settle; she won’t take a bottle—it’s breaking my heart.  Most of the time when I get them they’re newborns, or old enough that I know what to do but I just can’t—“

“I can.”  There was no doubt in Derek; no uncertainty.  No second thoughts. 

It was then, the act of moving inside, and finding her, and seeing Derek lift the little snarling snow white wolf cub that the reality of it all settled around him, sharp and clear.  She fought hard, for her size; her little muzzle red with blood in no time at all, and still, Derek did nothing but hold her, cradling her closer against his ripped shirt, one hand cupped around the back of her neck to keep her steady when she twisted so violently in his arms she might have fallen otherwise.  The growl coming from his chest was one Stiles knew well, a warm and familiar rumble, all affection and concern and usually heard at about two inches away from his ear when he was sick. 

Somehow, it seemed just a little richer now, a little deeper.  More determined, maybe. 

The first time she settled, even a little, he laid his cheek against hers, kept it there even when she bit down, rattlesnake fast, but tiring.  Stiles could hear him murmuring to her, soft and low, and he didn’t need to catch the words.  They weren’t important.  The truth of anything he might have said was already there, in the care of his hands, and the blood on his shirt. 

When she shifted, finally, it may have been a half hour, or a full one.  He didn’t count, and he didn’t care.  It was over, and Stiles was stepping forward as soon as he could see human skin, feathery little human hair so blonde it was nearly as shock white as her coat.  Her little eyes opened when Stiles fingers touched her cheek, gleaming amber that Derek answered with a flash of blue. 

The quick burst of something like laughter from Stiles throat was all adoration, wet and thick with tears he could feel stinging at the corners of his eyes.  “Linden.  Hey, baby; you did so good; I’m proud of you.  Are you hungry, after all that?  I bet you’re hungry—“

He talked, and talked, and held her while Derek took off his bloodstained shirt to wrap her in the scent of something that would begin to become familiar, and Stiles felt the breath of his daughter against his own chest, warm through his shirt. 

For all his planning, all their preparations, he hadn’t ever really expected it to feel like this—weakness in his knees and a weight on his chest that pressed and pressed and pressed against his lungs, but he didn’t want it gone.  Not now, not ever. 

=====

Derek, of course, could always hear her crying first.  Later, when she’d become a presence in their lives so inextricable that his breath didn’t catch in his chest just at the sight of her, Stiles knew he’d be tempted to take advantage of that.

For now, it was all still too new, and he was well aware of their privilege—he had all the wide eyed wonder of a new parent, and none of the after birth exhaustion.  He felt half the time like he could watch her sleep for days, though he knew in reality he wouldn’t be able to manage it for more than a few minutes before he’d be itching to pick her up.  Her little fingers were too tiny; her claws, on the occasions she got fussy enough to sprout them, tinier still.  She scratched him good her second day home, and he’d bear those marks on his wrist for quite a while—maybe forever.

He hadn’t said it to Derek because he wasn’t sure he’d understand, but honestly?  Forever was what he hoped for, a permanent mark of what it had been like to bring his daughter home, and begin to teach her that nothing she could ever do would change the fact that they were pack.

Though she was bigger than the newborn they’d prepared for, at 6 months now Linden still looked impossibly small when Stiles held her, and smallest between the two of them.  That was exactly where she liked best to be, though, and it made Stiles’ chest ache, his blood pounding in his ears.  Walled in between his chest and Derek’s, she’d begun to feel safe.  She knew what it was like not to, and yet it hadn’t been long before she’d started to trust them, her little face scenting desperately into their chests when they picked her up.

The lack of certainty in her first pack, it seemed, had made her crave it all the more.  They couldn’t take the knowledge of sudden lack and fear away from her; no matter how much they loved her, no matter what they did from here on out.  Stiles had read enough recently about early childhood development to know that the shadow of it would never fully leave her mind.  He had, on first reading that, closed the internet window he’d had open with vicious force, and opened another.  It hadn’t helped.

There would always be something there, even if she reached the point of not consciously realizing it—a deep instinct that knew that protection was not guaranteed.  Pack was not a constant.

It horrified him, and horrified Derek in a slightly deeper way.  Stiles knew how pack felt to a human, but Derek knew how it felt to a wolf.  He had lived his entire life with a dozen strong ties humming inside him; without them, he’d have felt dangerously unmoored.  Stiles could see the pain of wondering in his eyes sometimes when he looked at her, and he could almost feel how hard Derek was trying to imagine what it would be like.  The first night they’d brought her home, she cried so much Derek had pressed his hand to her chest to try and help her, tears slipping from his own eyes when he realized there was nothing he could do; nothing physical to take.

Derek had whispered, sharp and vicious _How could they; how could they just—_ ,but Talia has touched the back of his neck and stopped him, soft and easy in guiding him the way her leadership always was.  Soft, but firm as steel.

She had told them, then, all they had to do was love her, and the rest would follow.  Love her, and she would realize they were pack.  Love her, and she would learn that she was safe.

She hadn’t been wrong; in Stiles’ experience, Talia Hale rarely was.  Despite all he’d read, all the experts said, Stiles had to wonder if maybe the rule about early development was one they could break after all.  If they loved her hard enough, maybe, eventually, nothing else would matter, and even down deep her earliest memories would be nothing but this—waking in the sleepy blue-grey of early mornings, being gathered up and fed and held and brought back full and warm to nestle in a bed that smelled like pack, surrounded by her parents.  The gentle scratch of Derek’s stubble when he scented her; the adoration in Stiles fingers as he played with her wispy hair and held up his hand afterward for her to press hers against.

Derek broke the sleepy hush of the moment with his eyes still closed, his words muffled against the pillow, and his daughter’s shoulder.  “Your dad’s here.”

“Too sleepy to go bark at the window, huh?”

Before, when it was just the two of them, Derek would have told him to fuck off.  There would have been no malice in him, even then, but now the sentiment was only in his eyes, cracked open just enough for Stiles to see his irritation. 

The effect was ruined, a bit, by the rumpled mess of his hair. 

Unable to resist, Stiles reached over and ruffled it further.  “Don’t worry about it, big guy; you two stay here.  I’ll go.  He’s probably here to stage a kidnapping, but I can hold him off with breakfast.”

Before he could move, Derek rose up just enough to kiss him.  They met in the middle, over Linden, and the easy warmth of it all was only greater for the addition of her little feet kicking slow and sleepy against their chests.  This was pack; this was all they needed, and all she need ever remember. 

Downstairs, he started the coffee while his father’s car still meandered up the long drive, and plugged in the Christmas lights before he went to the door.  They lit the tree, and the banister, and a few hung like stars down the length of the hall.  He had gone overboard a bit, maybe, but it was her first Christmas; he only had one chance.

Not to mention, the truth of what Samantha had hinted at the night she called about her back in early November hovered in his mind, too insidious to banish.  They had intended to sacrifice her, on the Solstice.  The court documents read during her custody agreements had proved it—they had intended to skin her alive, for an accident of genetics, and the possibility that she was, instead, the daughter of a roving Alpha known in the Deep South as the Ozark Ghost. 

If Stiles had his way, she would never know that.  She goddamn well deserved to keep celebrating the Solstice like a normal wolf without remembering it; if that meant he went all out for Solstice and Christmas combined to bury his own remembering, so be it. 

At the door, Stiles hugged his dad before he said a word, chasing the whole mess out of his head by burying his face into the collar of his jacket.  He was no wolf, but it was easy, sometimes, for supernatural creatures to forget that though it might not be a heightened sense, scent was critical for humans, too.  His dad in his jacket from the station smelled like home, and relief; safety, and love.  He always had. 

Stiles loved him for that, and for everything else that he was—the sort of man who would stand in the doorway in the cold and hug him back, hard, and not ask why. 

At the table, over coffee, they talked about Linden and Derek and work, John’s at the station and Stiles’ enchantment consulting that wouldn’t resume until he’d had at least two months paternity leave, though he already missed it. 

It wasn’t until Stiles had gotten up to start making breakfast that his dad pulled something out of his pocket, wrapped in white tissue paper. 

“I brought this for my grandbaby,” he said, his eyes sparkling like they always did when he mentioned Linden.  He was as head over heels as any of them, and had been since he’d seen her first picture.  “—but you can open it.”

“How generous of you to leave that to someone with fine motor skills.”  Stiles left the eggs in the measuring cup and the eye off, and leaned over the island to take the package from him.  It was heavy, well made.  As he unwrapped, glitter slipped from the inside to spill over his fingers, dusting the counter. 

“When you were a baby, your mom was determined she’d get you the best ‘first Christmas’ ornament.  As much as she loved it, she wanted it to be special; she dragged me all over the place.  Whatever it was she had in mind I never really knew, because _nothing_ was good enough, but she wouldn’t tell me what would be.” 

Stiles had heard this story, at least once every Christmas.  Still, he prompted the next part, as if he hadn’t.  “Until you found the mirror.”

“Until _you_ found the mirror; if you hadn’t reached out and grabbed that thing walking through the store, I might have been consigned to the hell of 50 more Christmas stores.”  Every year, it went on the tree first, and it wasn’t even technically a ‘Baby’s First Christmas’ ornament—just a mirror with an ornate frame, two carved silver fairies draped in holly forming the arch over the top.  With fey blood running on his mother’s side of the family, and known to skip a few generations, she’d wondered if his affinity for it had meant something. 

She hadn’t lived long enough to find out it didn’t, and—no matter what his dad said—Stiles would never _really_ know for certain if she would have been disappointed. 

“Glad to be of service grabbing breakable objects—“  Stiles paused in unwrapping, faux trepidation in his eyes.  “Please tell me this isn’t a mirror.”  It did not, in any way, feel like a mirror.

“It isn’t a mirror.”

“Good, because everything goes in her mouth right now, and I might not have had the jaw strength to shatter a mirror but I’m pretty sure Linden could damage the Chrysler building.”

“Would you just open it and see for yourself?”

It was almost open, anyway.  Stiles tugged at the last piece of tissue paper, revealing a gorgeously realistic sculpture of a wolf pup, silver white.  Her fur gleamed with glitter, but other than this touch her little happy face was so real she could have just walked in from the snow.  Her head was cocked, the end of her own red and green scarf caught jauntily between her teeth.  There, on the scarf in silver writing, was carved _Baby’s 1 st Solstice 2023_. 

For a moment, Stiles throat closed up so tight he could barely breathe, his vision fuzzy at the edges.  Her first Solstice.  It could have been her only one, but it wouldn’t.  It wouldn’t.  She’d have this one, and this Christmas, and dozens more, and if she was anything like her grandfather, someday she’d be telling her own children all about the battered wolf pup in the old cardboard box from years and years past, teeth marks on it where she’d chewed it during a family picture. 

“It’s pretty traditional for a wolf’s first year I know, but it’s not _strictly_ a Christmas ornament and I didn’t go to 12 stores, but it looked so much like her wolf that I thought—“

Stiles hugged him, glittery hands fisting maybe a little tighter than they had to into the back of his jacket, dusting him with it.  At work, tomorrow night, it’d make him smile.

“It’s perfect, dad.  It’s perfect.” 

 


End file.
